Pentecost 10

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Pentecost 10
PROPER: 12A
PLACE: St. John’s Episcopal Church, Kingsville
DATE: July 28,2002


TEXT: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-49a The Kingdom of Heaven
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. . .
like yeast . . .
like treasure hidden in a field . . .
like a merchant in search of fine pearls . . .
like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind.

ISSUE: Jesus startles his listeners with parables of what God’s kingdom, or realm, is like. In each case it is not exactly what they would have expected. Like the mustard seed, it is available as a weed and is open to all, but many despise and reject it, trying to get rid of it. Like yeast it rotten moldy bread, and impure, and the kingdom of God is being made available to the impure. Like a treasure, God’s kingdom is simply given without having to earn it, yet worth so much, it has to be shared and given away. Like a precious pearl, you sell all to possess the kingdom of God. Like the fish in the net, we are all possessed by the grace of God. Throwing bad fish away has to be questioned. These parables teach of God in a burlesque sort of way. Yet, they dramatize the all-encompassing love of God for the creation.
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The selected verses from Matthew’s Gospel account give us something of a shopping list to tell what the Kingdom of God is like. It is like a mustard seed, like leaven, like treasure or a precious pearl, and a great catch of fish. These parable of the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of God, or the Empire, or Realm of God were very unique and strange to the people who first heard these parables. In fact they were striking caricatures of a most unusual images. The domain of God, the realm or empire of God, would be thought of in rather triumphant terms. It would be a mighty place set aside for the worthy and pure participants in an ardent faith. Even today there are images of the Kingdom of Heaven or of God as a fenced in place, like a gated community, where St. Peter stands at its only entrance of Pearly Gates. Its streets are thought to be paved in gold with many mansions for people who have gone on to their reward. While these are interesting images they are quite different from the images that Jesus used for the Kingdom of God.
The first image is that of a mustard seed. It is as if someone planted a mustard seed, a very tiny seed, in his field. It grows up and all the birds of the air come and nest in its branches. What a startling image this is. It is hardly triumphant. Only a lunatic would plant a mustard seed in the first place. Mustard plants were weeds. Once they got started you couldn’t get rid of them. They were really more like bushes than trees. They did have some healing qualities in them and could be used as a laxative. They were hardly big, but were bountiful, and birds came and nested in them and ate the seeds. The vision of great national triumph of the time was for the nation to be like the great and tall cedars of Lebanon. But the great nations often grew big, arrogant, and corrupt and fell, taking everything with them. God’s kingdom is not grand in this sense. It is as humble as a weed that provides seed for its creatures, and all the birds can nest in its refreshing shade. It is a humble bush for all people, very unlike the triumph states and arrogance of the world God’s realm is a realm for all people, humble and simple, bountiful, and like a weed it cannot be stomped out. It just comes up abounding somewhere else.
Furthermore, the Kingdom, Realm, Domain, Dominion of God is like a woman who mixes yeast with three measures of flour until it is all leavened. This parable would really have gotten people’s attention and started them thinking. Any story or parable that featured a woman as its star figure would have been suspect, but Jesus did have a reputation for associating with women in sharp contrast to the social restrictions of his time. The woman mixes the yeast with the flour. Actually the people of this time did not have yeast. What they used to leaven bread was old moldy bread. Their bread was something like sour dough. At the Passover Feast, all yeast or leaven was removed from the house, because it was considered moldy, unclean, and an impure substance. Here is a woman, who herself would be considered at times unclean, mixing moldy bread leaven with three measures of flour. That was a enough flour to make a whole truck full of bread. It was enough bread for a whole town and then some. What’s going on here? The kingdom of God is like a woman mixing impure leaven with flour and coming up with enough bread to celebrate a Messianic Feast! God can and will handle the impurities of the world, and invite them into the feast, and the Messianic Banquet in the Realm and Dominion of God! God can use the last, least, lost, and the worst to His best advantage.
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that someone finds hidden in a field. In a time when banks were not very secure, and unlike they are today, many people buried their wealth for safety. Some how or another a man finds treasure. It just falls into his lap. He keeps it hidden and decides to buy the field at the cost of everything that he has. That was pretty dumb. He sells everything he has to buy a field with treasure that he could never use. Legally, the treasure belongs to the original owner of the field. The Kingdom of God is a treasure indeed. It is God’s own precious realm. No one, however, owns it, or is more entitled than anyone else. The Pharisees could not lay claim to it, any more than the Catholics, or the Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and all the others. The treasure is God’s, it cannot be possessed, it can only be lived in.
A merchant of jewelry finds the pearl of pearls. He goes and sells everything he has to own the precious pearl. The pearl may well be a pearl of wisdom. He sells everything he has to possess the greatest wisdom of the world. The Kingdom of God is like that. You have to sell all you have, get rid of all your junk, and the things that possess you and obsess you, and receive the wisdom of God in a heavenly realm of love and forgiveness. The man sells it all, takes up the cross of love and service and enters into the realm of the wisdom of God.
Look at these parables and what are we left with in terms of what God and God’s Kingdom is like. It is very earthy, like a humble weed. Everyone, Jews and Gentiles, is worthy to abide in it. There is food for all. It is earthy and timely and in the here and the now, but not like the triumphal dreams of the arrogant and those hungry for power. It’s wisdom is love. It is non-possessive but lived in by the pure and the impure. It is a treasure to be cherished. There is the spiritual abundance of dwelling with God. Jesus saw the potential of a remarkable unity and at oneness with one another and with God. God and God’s realm is a way of life.
What about the net that was thrown into the sea? The fisherman gathers up the fish. There are good fish and bad fish, maybe shellfish, scavengers, and other types of sea creatures that Jews of the time would not eat. They are thrown away. Only the good stuff is kept. Sometimes the Good News of the Gospel is too good. Matthew throws in this last parable that contradicts all the rest. It was hard to believe that God could be so all loving. Many biblical scholars do not attribute the fish net parable to Jesus. They think it was a later addition by Matthew, who was himself Jewish, and who was addressing a Jewish community. He or the early church had to do away with bad people, and set some kind of boundaries. Maybe, the bad people mention was intended to address the Pharisees, who wouldn’t follow Jesus. Maybe? It’s hard to say. Sometimes we just don’t know everything, or we have to be critical of biblical content.
But for the present, the Kingdom and presence of God is readily available to all. We can live in it now as a great treasure of forgiveness and love, with bountiful room and spiritual nourishment for all. Step into the kingdom now in all of its abounding budding. We need it; the violent and greedy world needs it. To be in the kingdom is our only hope.